I've been playing for a few days, and I'm wondering about good ways to mine lots of delicious ores. What I do right now is dig a hole with a ladder, then go off and explore random caves in search of shiny things. I've noticed after a long time that I receive only a small amount of iron, and even less gold. I've only found diamond once. Any tricks I could use?
go down, then down more, then more, then more until you find a wide open area. Kill all the enemies expolore the entire area, get tons of ore. I did this and got 4 stacks of coal (more to be mined) 2 stacks of iron, half a stack of gold (gold has no real use that i know of....) 5 stacks of red-stone, and 15 diamonds.
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Quote from mjcabooseblu »
Muncher is right, listen to him, he can cure the blind and make paraplegics walk.
I've been playing for a few days, and I'm wondering about good ways to mine lots of delicious ores. What I do right now is dig a hole with a ladder, then go off and explore random caves in search of shiny things. I've noticed after a long time that I receive only a small amount of iron, and even less gold. I've only found diamond once. Any tricks I could use?
If you want diamond, go low. It only spawns 20 blocks from the bottom of the map or lower, which is about 16 blocks above adminium. As for receiving less ores after time, just keep trying; you're just having bad luck. Go to a new area and look for more natural caves to explore.
Craft at least 40 ladders and then dig a shaft straight down (mine are usually 3x3). Keep going until you reach the adminium layer and then go back up about 10-15 blocks and make a floor. Craft your ladder back to the surface as soon as you have finished your flooring.
Make four small tunnels (2-3 squares tall) each going in a separate direction (N,S,W,E). Then break those smaller tunnels into a comb shape and keep mining in the same direction. How far apart you choose to make your comb is up to you, different spacing may yield better results (you can even make crosshatches and change levels if you're feeling creative).
I have found allot of diamonds using this technique because I am always around the area in which they spawn. I also do a bit of spelunking when I hit caves, which usually yields gold (diamonds don't seem to be out in the open).
I also suggest that you always go after coal/redstone/iron even if you don't need it; sometimes there are diamond veins behind them.
It's not so great for iron (it's sometimes better or worse; but usually worse than spelunking alone). I have never found this many diamonds in such a short amount of time just spelunking.
Something most people don't seem to know is that those scary cave noises are actually there to help you find caves.
Listen to where they come from and dig in that direction, you're bound to find a cave.
- Spelunking: Cave exploration. Follow and torch off caves, and you'll often find ores exposed. The deeper you go, the better the ore.
Less tools are used, however it is easy to miss a side passage in which monsters could be waiting when you come back up with your loot.
- Strip Mining: Just dig into the ground, mining out your own tunnels one layer at a time. There are several patterns around the forums (search for strip mining) , based on exposing at least one side of every block, so as to not miss out on ore.
You use a lot of tools, however if you're planning large constructions topside, the cobble you get can be useful.
If you're desperate, get yourself a full stack of 64 ladders and a stack of torches, find a nice 12x12 section of terrain, wall off the outside, maybe install a door, craft table, and storage or something special like that along the inside, make sure the area is lighted, and start digging down in a 10x10 square in the center, 1 layer at a time. When you get about 3 layers down, build a floor at the height of where ground was, put torches below, and keep digging down. Make a new floor every 10 layers or so, and don't forget to install ladders along 1 side of the pit as you go so that you have a way up. Chances are that you will eventually find some coal, iron, and maybe even gold, or atleast a cave somewhere along the way. As you'll be doing much digging, you'll probably want to be using stone tools, but be sure to have an ample supply of sticks.
The reason why you dig vertically is because you can't get lost doing it, you're almost guaranteed to find some ore given how random the ore locations are, and you generally need fewer torches to light a 10x10x10 space than the same volume stretched long. Ladders also work well when you need to make a quick escape. But again, make sure the area above is properly walled off and lit or you may have company as soon as you get to the surface.
IMO skylight mines are best, since they don't take too much space and require minimal lighting during the day. Once you reach the bedrock you're free to expand on the sides.
The best mining trick of all: Release the mouse just after/before a block breaks and re click. If you do it right, you can get rid of the wait time between destroying each block, allowing for a set amount of time to be shaved off each operation.
Diamond tools and fast to destroy things are the best when 'speed mining'. You can nearly walk through one layer of sand with a diamond shovel equipped unhindered.
Also, grid mines aren't the best mines, but are the most advised. From my research (and a dude who offered me a suggestion), a simple, straight corridor has absolute maximum efficiency for mining ore, but at a cost of lots of walking (this is a 2 high, 1 wide tunnel). making a branching system is good, but as soon as you make a grid, efficiency decreases. Also grids can get disturbingly complicated and hard to navigate.
Only digging one block above lava level (12), to six blocks above that (18) give yields of diamonds. Because of that, vertical mining plain sucks. You will get one third extra coal than normal, one third extra iron, half as much gold and less than ten percent diamond/red-stone than normal (this a 1x1 drill down, the most efficient way) . At the same time, you require wood for ladders, lack safety from the hazards of caverns and lava and you leave a hole to be filled with dirt, making the area useless to strip mine.
When suggesting ideas, always research first. You're guaranteed to be wrong first time, so don't push it without facts.
Obviously once you get down low enough, a vertical shaft won't get you everything you need, but it will make sure you get down far enough in the first place. For filling it? Why bother filling it? The point of digging down that far is to get around the hassle of trying to find a deep cave where you won't get lost easily and still getting to the right depth. A wide shaft will also give you plenty of dirt, cobblestone, and gravel for building above ground making islands, or filling in terrain.
For filling it? Why bother filling it? The point of digging down that far is to get around the hassle of trying to find a deep cave where you won't get lost easily and still getting to the right depth. A wide shaft will also give you plenty of dirt, cobblestone, and gravel for building above ground making islands, or filling in terrain.
1) If you make a grid of smaller shafts across the land in an attempt at finding a cave, you will quickly find death pits lying around. It's just plain messy.
2) finding a cave is easy enough. It takes five minutes max to get a good one by walking, and once you're at the bottom, often there will be enough side tunnels to last for hours. Getting lost is no problem either, as usually you'll never manage to stray out of viewing distance of your house/settlement if you dig a spiral staircase up.
3)A wide shaft will get you plenty of dirt, stone and gravel, but is extremely inefficient and has massive tool wastage, while giving very few extra ores. You will end up using stone picks, slowing mining down until the next hit. Filling a kicking put with dirt is even harder, and should only be made if it will be used as a central mineshaft with tracks, or for the awesomeness of owning a deep pit.
A single 2 wide shaft down with 25 ladders at sea level can get you to around layers 12-14 (depending on ladder spacing up top and bottom.) which is perfectly level for a mining grid or branch. If you hit lava, then you have found a cavern anyway, as lava can only exist as a pool in caverns below level 11. If you do get a cavern, you now have the option to go spelunking. Only later when you have the iron should you make a spiral stair for minecarts to send back when mining.
To avoid all this, just find a deep cave, find lava, dig one layer above that. Nothing wrong with that.
Diamonds definitely have a habit of being near lava from my experience. That's pretty much how I narrow down where they might be.
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When exploring caverns clear out all the dirt and gravel. It's fast even without tools, and you'll be amazed at the amount of ores hiding a few blocks away. There's also the chance you'll expose another part of the cavern. Thanks to this strategy, I found my first diamond.
1) If you make a grid of smaller shafts across the land in an attempt at finding a cave, you will quickly find death pits lying around. It's just plain messy.
Which is why someone caps or walls off their shaft. Hard to miss a 10x10 hole to hell when it's got a 3 block high cobble stone wall around it and is covered with torches.
Quote from featherblade »
2) finding a cave is easy enough. It takes five minutes max to get a good one by walking, and once you're at the bottom, often there will be enough side tunnels to last for hours. Getting lost is no problem either, as usually you'll never manage to stray out of viewing distance of your house/settlement if you dig a spiral staircase up.
That varies quite a bit by map. I've had a few games already which lacked any substantial caves with an opening anywhere near the spawn point (cartographer has proven this bit). In my current game, I have exactly 1 cave near the spawn point, it's massive and it has several openings under the water, so was mostly flooded when the game was started... And did I mention the dungeon which was fairly close to the one dry entrance which happened to have a mob spawner inside, and interestingly enough is connected to 2 other dungeon rooms that I havn't stopped up the water on.
Quote from featherblade »
3)A wide shaft will get you plenty of dirt, stone and gravel, but is extremely inefficient and has massive tool wastage, while giving very few extra ores. You will end up using stone picks, slowing mining down until the next hit. Filling a kicking put with dirt is even harder, and should only be made if it will be used as a central mineshaft with tracks, or for the awesomeness of owning a deep pit.
For some of us, dirt and stone are good bits too as they give us materials to build with. Ore might be the main reason, but you can't do much with the ore without an ample supply of building components. Stone tools may take a little longer, but you'll also never run out of the materials for them if there are any trees nearby. 8 stone picks is usually enough to fill up a good portion of my inventory with blocks anyway, so you just use them up, get blocks, go to surface, stash the blocks away for later, make new tools, rinse and repeat.
Quote from featherblade »
A single 2 wide shaft down with 25 ladders at sea level can get you to around layers 12-14 (depending on ladder spacing up top and bottom.) which is perfectly level for a mining grid or branch. If you hit lava, then you have found a cavern anyway, as lava can only exist as a pool in caverns below level 11. If you do get a cavern, you now have the option to go spelunking. Only later when you have the iron should you make a spiral stair for minecarts to send back when mining.
While yes, a 2x1 shaft might be the most mathematically efficient way of getting down to a certain range or finding a cave, it doesn't leave you much room to move around in the rare chance that you break through to a dungeon or mob-infested cavern. Furthermore, while digging the shaft, you have just as much chance of finding any ores as you do in not finding anything other than stone since there are often spaces between clusters even when working entirely vertically and some of those spaces are larger than 5x5.
Although a 10x10 pit takes longer, and has more tool usage, even on the worst map you shouldn't have any problem finding enough ores to get you situated for other endeavors. And, when you're done, you can convert it rather neatly into a storage base and expand as you see fit.
Quote from featherblade »
To avoid all this, just find a deep cave, find lava, dig one layer above that. Nothing wrong with that.
That's your strategy but others may be inclined towards other methods. The only really wrong way of mining is to dig a 1x1 shaft straight down, or never digging lower than sea-level.
I tend to go down as low as I can(with a shaft or stairs) until I hit the bottom. Then I start tunnels in each direction just above the bottom until I hit lava. Then I dig up around the lava, which always seems to have at least a small cave above it's surface. It's both challenging and rewarding in terms of minerals recovered.
I'd recommend bringing multiple buckets of water for lava control as needed if you try it, though. Also, never, ever dig out squares right above your head while doing this. Do it at angles.
As long as you know that vertical is not the answer, I have succeeded.
If you want stone, stripmine 1 level above the lava level. Even a normal corridor still gives you a ton of stone in the end. It's far better to mine deep than high, to the point of lava.
A vertical strip mine is simply too inefficient, and I would order any miners I have as friends not to mine like that. It's almost barbaric, making pits that render chunks useless.
1x1 vertical mines have a purpose, but are very dangerous. 1x2 don't, as they lose the bonus from viewing extra sides.
Anyway, won't argue here anymore. It's easier to prove people wrong face to face in a server, real time.
TLDR the Argument: Don't make vertical strip mines/pits. They suck.
If you want diamond, go low. It only spawns 20 blocks from the bottom of the map or lower, which is about 16 blocks above adminium. As for receiving less ores after time, just keep trying; you're just having bad luck. Go to a new area and look for more natural caves to explore.
Make four small tunnels (2-3 squares tall) each going in a separate direction (N,S,W,E). Then break those smaller tunnels into a comb shape and keep mining in the same direction. How far apart you choose to make your comb is up to you, different spacing may yield better results (you can even make crosshatches and change levels if you're feeling creative).
I have found allot of diamonds using this technique because I am always around the area in which they spawn. I also do a bit of spelunking when I hit caves, which usually yields gold (diamonds don't seem to be out in the open).
I also suggest that you always go after coal/redstone/iron even if you don't need it; sometimes there are diamond veins behind them.
It's not so great for iron (it's sometimes better or worse; but usually worse than spelunking alone). I have never found this many diamonds in such a short amount of time just spelunking.
Also, it's much much safer than spelunking.
I find them in the open all the time.
Well, maybe I should have rephrased that:
Diamonds don't seem to be in plain sight as often as gold is.
Listen to where they come from and dig in that direction, you're bound to find a cave.
This way you also get a ton of stone, which you might need if you are building a castle or something.
Own3d.tv Channel
- Spelunking: Cave exploration. Follow and torch off caves, and you'll often find ores exposed. The deeper you go, the better the ore.
Less tools are used, however it is easy to miss a side passage in which monsters could be waiting when you come back up with your loot.
- Strip Mining: Just dig into the ground, mining out your own tunnels one layer at a time. There are several patterns around the forums (search for strip mining) , based on exposing at least one side of every block, so as to not miss out on ore.
You use a lot of tools, however if you're planning large constructions topside, the cobble you get can be useful.
The reason why you dig vertically is because you can't get lost doing it, you're almost guaranteed to find some ore given how random the ore locations are, and you generally need fewer torches to light a 10x10x10 space than the same volume stretched long. Ladders also work well when you need to make a quick escape. But again, make sure the area above is properly walled off and lit or you may have company as soon as you get to the surface.
Diamond tools and fast to destroy things are the best when 'speed mining'. You can nearly walk through one layer of sand with a diamond shovel equipped unhindered.
Also, grid mines aren't the best mines, but are the most advised. From my research (and a dude who offered me a suggestion), a simple, straight corridor has absolute maximum efficiency for mining ore, but at a cost of lots of walking (this is a 2 high, 1 wide tunnel). making a branching system is good, but as soon as you make a grid, efficiency decreases. Also grids can get disturbingly complicated and hard to navigate.
Only digging one block above lava level (12), to six blocks above that (18) give yields of diamonds. Because of that, vertical mining plain sucks. You will get one third extra coal than normal, one third extra iron, half as much gold and less than ten percent diamond/red-stone than normal (this a 1x1 drill down, the most efficient way) . At the same time, you require wood for ladders, lack safety from the hazards of caverns and lava and you leave a hole to be filled with dirt, making the area useless to strip mine.
When suggesting ideas, always research first. You're guaranteed to be wrong first time, so don't push it without facts.
A simple suggestion on geology here.
~~~
Slaves of the Coal Mine
An interesting Novel to pass the time.
Obviously once you get down low enough, a vertical shaft won't get you everything you need, but it will make sure you get down far enough in the first place. For filling it? Why bother filling it? The point of digging down that far is to get around the hassle of trying to find a deep cave where you won't get lost easily and still getting to the right depth. A wide shaft will also give you plenty of dirt, cobblestone, and gravel for building above ground making islands, or filling in terrain.
1) If you make a grid of smaller shafts across the land in an attempt at finding a cave, you will quickly find death pits lying around. It's just plain messy.
2) finding a cave is easy enough. It takes five minutes max to get a good one by walking, and once you're at the bottom, often there will be enough side tunnels to last for hours. Getting lost is no problem either, as usually you'll never manage to stray out of viewing distance of your house/settlement if you dig a spiral staircase up.
3)A wide shaft will get you plenty of dirt, stone and gravel, but is extremely inefficient and has massive tool wastage, while giving very few extra ores. You will end up using stone picks, slowing mining down until the next hit. Filling a kicking put with dirt is even harder, and should only be made if it will be used as a central mineshaft with tracks, or for the awesomeness of owning a deep pit.
A single 2 wide shaft down with 25 ladders at sea level can get you to around layers 12-14 (depending on ladder spacing up top and bottom.) which is perfectly level for a mining grid or branch. If you hit lava, then you have found a cavern anyway, as lava can only exist as a pool in caverns below level 11. If you do get a cavern, you now have the option to go spelunking. Only later when you have the iron should you make a spiral stair for minecarts to send back when mining.
To avoid all this, just find a deep cave, find lava, dig one layer above that. Nothing wrong with that.
A simple suggestion on geology here.
~~~
Slaves of the Coal Mine
An interesting Novel to pass the time.
Dedicated VPS, 30 slots, 24/7 uptime and a great community!
Runs Runecraft, Llama, hMod and many plugins.
CAUSE I'M AWESOME.
Which is why someone caps or walls off their shaft. Hard to miss a 10x10 hole to hell when it's got a 3 block high cobble stone wall around it and is covered with torches.
That varies quite a bit by map. I've had a few games already which lacked any substantial caves with an opening anywhere near the spawn point (cartographer has proven this bit). In my current game, I have exactly 1 cave near the spawn point, it's massive and it has several openings under the water, so was mostly flooded when the game was started... And did I mention the dungeon which was fairly close to the one dry entrance which happened to have a mob spawner inside, and interestingly enough is connected to 2 other dungeon rooms that I havn't stopped up the water on.
For some of us, dirt and stone are good bits too as they give us materials to build with. Ore might be the main reason, but you can't do much with the ore without an ample supply of building components. Stone tools may take a little longer, but you'll also never run out of the materials for them if there are any trees nearby. 8 stone picks is usually enough to fill up a good portion of my inventory with blocks anyway, so you just use them up, get blocks, go to surface, stash the blocks away for later, make new tools, rinse and repeat.
While yes, a 2x1 shaft might be the most mathematically efficient way of getting down to a certain range or finding a cave, it doesn't leave you much room to move around in the rare chance that you break through to a dungeon or mob-infested cavern. Furthermore, while digging the shaft, you have just as much chance of finding any ores as you do in not finding anything other than stone since there are often spaces between clusters even when working entirely vertically and some of those spaces are larger than 5x5.
Although a 10x10 pit takes longer, and has more tool usage, even on the worst map you shouldn't have any problem finding enough ores to get you situated for other endeavors. And, when you're done, you can convert it rather neatly into a storage base and expand as you see fit.
That's your strategy but others may be inclined towards other methods. The only really wrong way of mining is to dig a 1x1 shaft straight down, or never digging lower than sea-level.
I'd recommend bringing multiple buckets of water for lava control as needed if you try it, though. Also, never, ever dig out squares right above your head while doing this. Do it at angles.
As long as you know that vertical is not the answer, I have succeeded.
If you want stone, stripmine 1 level above the lava level. Even a normal corridor still gives you a ton of stone in the end. It's far better to mine deep than high, to the point of lava.
A vertical strip mine is simply too inefficient, and I would order any miners I have as friends not to mine like that. It's almost barbaric, making pits that render chunks useless.
1x1 vertical mines have a purpose, but are very dangerous. 1x2 don't, as they lose the bonus from viewing extra sides.
Anyway, won't argue here anymore. It's easier to prove people wrong face to face in a server, real time.
TLDR the Argument: Don't make vertical strip mines/pits. They suck.
A simple suggestion on geology here.
~~~
Slaves of the Coal Mine
An interesting Novel to pass the time.